This book is about magic theory!

Water reads it!

All magic ultimately derives from spirits! Magicians are humans who are descended from spirits. Spirits come in different kinds, each associated with a natural phenomenon, ranging from broad categories like "water" to narrow ones like specific plants. Magicians have magical power derived from each phenomenon they have a spirit ancestor of; the more spirit blood they have for a category, the more of its power they have. Magicians use magic by defining an effect they want and then binding it to one or more phenomena to power it. The more the phenomenon or combination of phenomena suits the spell, and the more carefully the magician does their own detail work in defining the effect, the less power the spell requires. Magicians who don't have enough power to fuel a spell they want can bind spirits and steal their power for fuel (the pages actually describing how to do this have been torn out).

"This book is ripped."

"Where?"

"Here."

"Oh. There. Yes. I took those pages out."

"Oh." She reads on.

There follows a great deal of discussion on what power sources are suitable for what effects and how.

What kind of effects?

Healing, wards, various combat applications, cleaning a fouled water source, increasing crop yields, repelling various subsets of wild animal, attracting various subsets of wild animal, miscellaneous matter manipulation...

Gosh. Water sits there and reads the entire book, then puts it back.

"Do you want to read one with stories next?"

"Sure!"

She finds one that has stories and hands it to her.

Water reads that one.

It is a book of short stories about the coming-of-age of the youngest daughter of a pair of farmers.

Water has to ask a lot of questions about this. For example, she does not know what a farmer is.

"Farmers are humans who grow food for other humans."

"Why do they do that?"

"Because humans need to eat food to survive, and it's more efficient if some humans grow a lot of food so the rest of them can do other things."

"Oh." Read read.

The book mentions people who are not farmers! There is the weaver, who buys the wool from their sheep; there is the cobbler, from whom on one occasion shoes are purchased for one of the protagonist's brothers; there is the baker, there is the smith, there is the midwife...

Water keeps asking about things she does not know.

Mileda usually knows the answers!